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One is on free hawaii site, one is...here:http://www.PetitionOnline.com/18932009/petition.htmlFrom Native Hawaiian to Native American?Originally appeared in the Hawai'i Island Journal, Native Americas Journal and Indian Country Today.As the Akaka Bill drives forward in Congress, Hawaiian voices are urging a closer look.by Anne Keala KellyJust days after the U.S. Senate web site posted yet another draft of the Akaka Bill (6 and counting) dated June 27th, the handful of Hawaiians who had access to its location got the clearest sense of what federal recognition legislation actually boils down to.A bill that, in its initial form, gave some autonomy to Hawaiians has at last been stripped down to mean total control will belong to the Department of the Interior and a select few Hawaiians. Many Hawaiians still don't understand the process of federal recognition despite four years of questions, disagreements, and an apparent lack of support for the bill outside of the homesteads. And presently, homesteaders are the only members of the Hawaiian community being targeted for "education" about the bill by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA).The legislation, as written, sets up a "Hawaiian governing entity" that takes its orders from the Department of Interior (DOI), the secretary of which changes with each new administration. At present, the DOI is being sued by American Indians who allege that they were robbed of billions of dollars throughout the 20th century; that agency is responsible for holding Indian land assets in trust. Although they have been ordered twice by a federal court to come up with a full accounting of those assets, the DOI appears to have misplaced the records.The Akaka Bill also sets into motion a land claims settlement that some say will extinguish Hawaiian rights and claims to the crown and government lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom, referred to as "ceded lands."The questions surrounding the bill have consistently remained the same: What does it mean to become a "Native American?" Does federal recognition address the present day issues Hawaiians are faced with as a people: desecration of sacred sites, the out-migration of Hawaiians because they cannot afford the jacked-up cost-of-living that comes with being "American" in Hawai'i, and the short walk from the neighborhood block to the cell block taken by so many young Hawaiian men and women.Then there are historical issues like the dismemberment of an independent nation state known as the Hawaiian Kingdom. The list could go on, and the questions outnumber the answers.During the July 4th holiday week, Senator Daniel Inouye met with Governor Linda Lingle and the board of the CNHA in Honolulu to reaffirm their commitment to push this bill through before the Senate goes into recess in August. And the trustees at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) will have made another trip to Capitol Hill by the beginning of August, the third such trip taken by almost every trustee since May.With so much riding on whether or not Hawaiian people undergo the conversion from Native Hawaiian to Native American, one would think that the Hawaiian leaders and elected politicians in Washington D.C. might slow down the race to pass this thing long enough for Hawaiians to actually read it. But that doesn't appear likely."Ninety-nine percent of Hawaiians don't know what's in this most recent draft of the bill," said Haunani-Kay Trask, a professor at the Center for Hawaiian Studies, UH-Manoa. "Structurally, the whole point of self-determination means that the Hawaiian people determine their future. They don't allow the feds or the state to determine it - that would be state determination, not self-determination. Our people are so colonized, though, 27 military bases, six million tourists a year . . . that'll change your thinking."OHA is the only Hawai'i state agency with an office in Washington D.C., which Trask believes was the plan all along. "They're gearing up to federalize themselves. What they are doing isn't representative of democracy - this isn't a Hawaiian agency, it's a state agency becoming a federal puppet."With so much confusion over the details of the actual legislation, many find the lack of restraint on the part of legislators and OHA trustees to be alarming. Combine that with the few community meetings being staged to sell this legislation only to homesteaders, and Hawaiians as a people begin to take on the appearance of steers being herded to the slaughterhouse.The CNHA and the State Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations (SCHHA-pronounced shaw) only held two poorly publicized meetings on Oahu. And at those meetings, which lasted two hours, they used a thick reference booklet called "Lawsuits & Legislation: The Arakaki Suit & Akaka Bill Explained," and a power point presentation. The presentation is also found in the booklet and is itself confusing, with odd statements like: " 'Indian' is a legal term for U.S. Indigenous or Native - It does not describe a cultural affiliation or people - It is a term of art - Even Indians are not Indians!'"Most "American" Indians do not call themselves Native Americans. Sherman Alexi, renowned writer and filmmaker, has expressed that sentiment a number of times, saying he regards the term "Native American" as "a product of liberal white guilt."Didi Lee Kwai, elementary school teacher and homesteader in Papakolea, attended one of the two meetings on Oahu and was disappointed in the presentation. "One problem was that they didn't allow a chance to ask questions," said Kwai. "People talk about the plenary power of Congress over Hawaiians that this bill gives, but what the hell is that? They are not giving us all the information - we don't hear the real consequences, and that is that we are giving up a nation." Kwai adds, "The real question is what do they [the United States] want? OHA's commercials talk about what Hawaiians will lose, but they never talk about what America wants to get out of this."Kwai, who said she is selling her homestead, went on to say, "Just common sense based on the history of the U.S. and the way they break treaties, like they did with the Hawaiian Kingdom, means Hawaiians should not trust the U.S. If they say we have to buy the homestead land fee simple, how many can afford that? I can't."Also slipped into the CNHA booklet is another booklet called the "CNHA Policy Brief: The Economic Impact of Native Hawaiian Federal Recognition." It manages to detail terrifying threats that have been brandished like guns since the U.S. Supreme Court's Rice v. Cayetano decision of February 2000, allowing non-Hawaiians to vote for OHA trustees.The booklet asserts that without federal recognition it is likely that the Arakaki lawsuit, which challenges the validity of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act as race-based, will succeed, which would supposedly put an end to OHA and the Hawaiian homesteads. The booklet says that in the event of a victory for Arakaki, "homesteaders will face eviction . . . programs that benefit scores of organizations and thousands of individual Native Hawaiians will be eliminated." It then lists nine state and non-profit organizations that receive federal grants adding up to over $59 million per year.In a nutshell, page two of the CNHA Policy Brief lays out the specifics used by state agencies like OHA and SCHHA to push the Akaka Bill. The logic they invoke, however, requires that Hawaiians must literally surrender all of their claims for the bargain basement price of $59 million, give or take a few million. And that's with no assurance that the federal obligations to Hawaiians will be maintained.The fact remains that nowhere in this or any other version of the Akaka Bill is any one Native Hawaiian entitlement protected. In other words, right now, before any legislation is passed, before any lawsuits are adjudicated, Hawaiians have: some federal dollars out there, some say the only legitimate claim to land in Hawai'i, and their legal, cultural, and political identity not as Native Americans, but as Native Hawaiians, which itself defines more accurately their historical reality.Referring to Section 7 of the bill, instructing the creation of a roll, Kekuni Blaisdell, independence advocate, said, "A roll is a term used in Indian Country. To me this newest draft of the bill puts us in the state of federal Indian ward-ship and makes it clear that we are wards of the United States. This means that we ultimately lose all title of our lands to the United States."Mililani Trask, member of the United Nations' Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, specifically calls into question the process OHA has used with this bill and new changes in the wording. "First of all, our people have not had hearings," said Trask. "And the newest draft has narrowed the definition of Hawaiian. Where it once allowed for all Hawaiians, it now states that you must show your qualification in three different criteria and the only Hawaiians who could do that with ease are Hawaiian homesteaders."Specifically, Trask is referring to Section 3 Part 7 of the bill, requiring Hawaiians to prove their lineage via 19th century Hawaiian Kingdom records and 1920 homestead eligibility. Trask's concerns include the absence of anything in the bill that allows for a process of appeals, and its manner of empowering the federal government to choose the process."In the first bill, native genealogists certified the roll; in this bill, it says adults will certify it, but it doesn't say who," said Trask. "At this time, there are only a handful of Hawaiians who are in receipt of state and federal funds. And they are the service agencies and organizations that are all members of CNHA. So, only those with the funding are going to be able to organize."An example of what Trask and others are talking about is the current effort being made by the SCHHA and CNHA. Between those two non-profits and the Hawai'i State Department of Hawaiian Homelands (DHHL), some Hawaiians see the way trust money is changing hands as highly questionable.When the Chair of the CNHA, Ray Soon, was still the Director of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands (DHHL), he initiated the transfer of $150,000 of trust assets to SCHHA. Micah Kane, a leading Republican who played a key role in Linda Lingle's gubernatorial campaign, completed the transfer when he became the DHHL director. Once transferred, the money was allocated to lobby for the Akaka Bill. SCHHA then hired the CNHA to put together a plan. So the money literally went from Soon's old job to his new job. Robin Danner, president of the CNHA and the Vice Chair of SCHHA, was also on both the giving and receiving end.The distrust many Hawaiians have for state agencies like OHA and DHHL, and monolithic non-profits such as the CNHA, stems in part from this mode of shifting Hawaiian money. More recently, questions have arisen regarding Danner, who appeared on the Hawaiian political scene about four years ago after she moved from Alaska to Kauai. Although she is Hawaiian, she lived much of her life in Alaska and worked with Alaska Natives in the Arctic region who, along with the oil industry, have been lobbying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.The Alaska connection to Native Hawaiian specific policies and law making in Washington D.C. is an area of analysis just beginning to happen in the Hawaiian community. More often than not, the dog that wags the federal tail that creates legislation pertaining to Hawaiians is shielded by distance and political/legal double-speak. But given the confusion over who is doing what and why, a genealogical sense of how Alaska State interests are connected directly to the Hawaiian predicament and the push to federally recognize Hawaiians may be helpful.The Akaka Bill, which has undergone more facelifts than Cher, has recently reportedly been renamed the Akaka /Stevens bill. A Republican from Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens is a longtime friend of Senator Inouye, and the one responsible for every congressional initiative to open drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He helped usher in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), which divided all Alaska Natives into two groups: those who have corporate relationships with the oil industry and those who do not. Some Alaska Natives now have money, but most have very little, and in addition, they lost their hunting and gathering rights in many areas of Alaska. ANCSA did for, or rather, to, the Alaska Natives what the Akaka Bill promises to do: extinguish all native title to land.Why bring any of this up now? Because Alaska oil dollars made their way into the Hawaiian community as financial support for the CNHA's efforts to lobby for the Akaka Bill. Last September, some of that money was used to pay for the CNHA's "1st Annual Native Hawaiian" conference in Waikiki, a gathering which itself became a lobbying effort for the Akaka Bill.Between all the members of CNHA, that organization controls virtually all of the Native Hawaiian federal dollars that flow to Hawaiian non-profits. So, the force with which CNHA, SCHHA, and OHA have pushed for this bill has come under criticism in the Hawaiian community as being nothing more than a handful of well-established Hawaiians preserving their own bank accounts over the well-being of all Hawaiians.Asked what he thinks Hawaiians should do in response to the bill, Blaisdell said, "Hawaiians have to denounce and reject this for what it really is. It's locking us into chains forever, and our descendants after us - we have no right to do it. Our colonial history is just a brief moment in the long course of our existence that reaches across the Pacific Ocean."Noenoe Silva, Asst. Professor of Political Science, UH Manoa, echoes what Blaisdell said. "I read what Clyde Namu'o said in the OHA paper ["… Hawaiians find ourselves at a historic crossroads, with our very existence hanging in the balance." June 2003]. He is suggesting that our identity as a nation is threatened, but it would take more than a few lawsuits to extinguish that. The Turks occupied Greece for 400 years and do the Greeks think of themselves as Turks? Of course not."Best known for recovering the anti-annexation Ku'e Petitions of 1897 - signed by more than 20,000 Hawaiians - and publishing them in 1998, an act of scholarship that literally changed the way Hawaiians view themselves historically, Silva doesn't see how Hawaiians can have self-determination in this situation."Is any American legislation worth giving up title to our land? Through this process, the U.S. is hoping to extinguish our title, but even if they succeed, Hawaiians will fight." Silva adds, "If we lose that, we lose everything. I understand that we need funding for education and healthcare, but we can use our land to generate our own funding. We must take care of our 'aina."The recent leak of a "confidential" document from OHA suggests that there may be justification for the scores of Hawaiians who say that they do not trust OHA. Dated March 11, 2003, the "Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Public Land Trust," was chaired by Boyd P. Mossman and included Rowena Akana, Dante Carpenter, Linda Dela Cruz, Colette Machado, Oswald Stender, and John Waihe'e IV.In this document lies some of the most clear evidence of OHA's intent, that being to negotiate a "global" land settlement that would "likely entail a full and final resolution of all claims which could be made on behalf of Native Hawaiians." Number 10 of the Recommendations states: "A new inventory of ceded lands is not recommended because of cost and time. There is enough information available to provide a reasoned decision for purposes of negotiations." This despite the contentious legal and political arguments over the state having failed to keep accurate accounts of the crown and government lands that are now referred to as ceded lands.The lack of the state's adherence to their fiduciary responsibilities to the Hawaiian people on the matter of the ceded lands is similar to that of the Department of Interior's rip-off of assets belonging to the American Indians. And given that OHA believes a new inventory is unnecessary, it's surprising that they gave $1.5 million last year to the Center for Hawaiian Studies, UH-Manoa, to conduct a survey of the ceded lands.A member of Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, Terri Napua Keko'olani, plainly expresses what many Hawaiians feel about their political situation. "All we got is ea, and that is our sovereignty."
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